Scoutmaster Podcast 355

And now it's the old Scoutmaster. Strange thing, Scouts do strange things. I had a scout who decided that he would climb a tree and cook his dinner up in the tree And I had to tell him to come down because the stakes were just too high. You're gonna have to think about that one. Sorry about that.

This is podcast number 355.. Come on, Welcome back to the Scoutmaster podcast. This is Clarke Green. Again, the publishing schedule is remaining as unpredictable as ever, as I pursue lots of things.

How's that for an explanation? I've always found it a little frustrating when people apologize for not having done like blog posts or podcasts and go into lengthy explanations about what's going on. Hey, everything's fine, I'm just busy with things. I haven't had a chance to sit down and do a podcast that was worth publishing.

I think this one is. So thanks for continuing to find me, even though I am making it as difficult as possible. We'll get back on an even kill soon.

Before I go on, I want to tell you a story that happened over the weekend. Wasn't I camping? Nope, I was at a wedding, a wedding for one of my old Eagle scouts. It's one of the fringe benefits of hanging around for as long as we've hung around.

There are scouts who are well into their adulthood now who we kept in contact with, and we know their parents, and we ended up getting invited to a wedding every so often. This is the third one this year. It's been a little bit of an unusual year When it came time for them to exchange vows. This is really touching. The bride went down the 12 points of the scout law and listed those as reasons she was marrying the groom.

Isn't that something? I wish I had recorded it. I wish I had it written down and maybe, maybe I'll be able to get it someday and be able to share it with you. But it was just such a sweet and touching moment to hear her talk about him being trustworthy and loyal and helpful and friendly, And as soon as she got to a certain point he kind of realized what she was doing, And as did the rest of us. There was a lot of scouts there. The best man was a fellow that the groom knew from scouts, and a lot of the groom's men were from scouts.

It was just amazing, And so a lot of people recognized that she was talking about the scout law And I was just so pleased, so touched and so grateful that that meant so much, And it was a very, very special day for everyone involved And Ashley and Brian, we send you our best wishes and our love. So, to move on in this podcast, I want to share with you the result of an email discussion that I had with a fellow scout, or some time ago, that I think you will find informative.

So let's get started, shall we?

Ladies and gentlemen, the story you are about to see is true. The names have been changed to protect the innocent. There's something that you either have not heard before or was instantly recognizable, And I put it here as kind of a lighthearted introduction to what is absolutely a serious discussion about misbehavior, about incidents and all of those things that we really wish never arrived at our doorstep as scouters, But these things are going to happen.

So let's take a look at an incident that I heard about really quite some time ago and sort of use it to study how we react to scouts misbehaving. So let me read this to you. After Weeblows visited our troop meeting the next morning, I got an email from one of the adults involved with the pack. They said that the Weeblows reported back to them that our scouts were using foul language And one of our scouts was looking up inappropriate images on his phone and showing them to the Weeblows.

Now that alone should send a cold chill down the spine of every single scouter. The email goes on to say we were invited to a pack committee meeting to discuss their concerns. Their position is that all scouts at any age need constant, direct adult supervision at all times. I tried explaining the idea of youth leadership and the patrol system, but they wouldn't really have any of it. I sat there while they told me what a terrible leader I am and our troop is the worst they've ever seen. Unless we make changes, they'll recommend their Weeblows look for a troop with a more adult involvement.

I was later contacted by our council to alert me that someone had reported the incident as a youth protection violation and that they had to launch a full investigation. It was in their hands now and to leave it up to them If you, if you didn't have a cold chill before, you should be having one now. I got a call from the head of the chartering organization later on. I was told that until things were resolved, all scouting activities were suspended and all the adult volunteers from the troop in the pack needed to meet together with two council representatives and go through youth protection training as a group.

So what do I do now? Oh man, this isn't funny. I understand that, but I laugh because boy do I recognize that feeling. It's a very bad feeling. Things are out of control and this kind of incident is as unmanageable as a natural disaster, An earthquake, a typhoon, a tornado, a hurricane, whatever you like. This is not what you would call a very manageable situation.

It's hard to fault anyone's actions here, right? I mean, you know this is something that parents should rightfully be concerned about and scouts should rightfully be concerned about.

And I've got to say, you know, probably needed to be elevated to the level where the council was looking in to make sure that things were not just totally off the rails. But the nature of this particular kind of misbehavior is kind of tabloid and salacious and I can certainly understand the reaction. This sort of incident usually skews our better judgment and perspective. Misusing cell phones, sharing inappropriate images and the use of bad language- that is not something I would call unprecedented amongst young people, and I can imagine similar scenarios and have actually experienced similar scenarios in the past, where the inappropriate image that was being shared was from a magazine and where the bad language could have been profanities in music being shared on a Walkman. Remember Walkman, Remember those.

And then you could go back even further and talk about like comic books and yeah. So anyway, look, this is not a sign that society is falling apart, that you're a horrible leader, that your scouts are miserable, misbehaving juvenile delinquents. This is the kind of thing we ought to expect, frankly, and be prepared for, and that's what we're going to discuss today.

So the script that plays out when this kind of thing happens is: there's an incident, there's adult outrage and overreaction because you know something must be done. So meetings are going to be held and emails are going to be exchanged and authorities are going to be informed, and we're going to be spend a great deal of time addressing a faulty risk reward calculation based on a false cause and effect relationship. That sounds pretty clinical, but let me explain what I mean. The faulty reasoning begins by assuming that an individual scout's indiscretion was caused or enabled by a lack of supervision.

Now, that could sometimes be the case, but in reality it was caused by an individual scout and could have happened really no matter the level of supervision. So the attempt to mitigate the risk of a similar incident by eliminating the possibility of all further incidents like this is really kind of a classic logical fallacy, and this kind of reaction unwittingly undercuts the scout oath and law as to render it meaningless. One of my constant themes is: the scout oath and law must mean something, and in incidents like these it certainly does. And the work we do as scouters in the broad goal of developing character in our scouts through the scout oath and law is really the beginning and end of the way that you address incidents like this. If we're to do our best for our scouts, we really have to treat the principles of the oath and law as real and have the highest expectations that they will be observed.

Now, to do this we also have to live with something else that is going to sound clinical, but it's called cognitive dissonance: Holding two opposing things in your mind at once. It's very uncomfortable to do.

Okay, because we have to have the highest expectations of behavior and at the same time we have to understand that misbehavior is inevitable. And I'm going to tell you that not only is misbehavior inevitable, in a way it is not unwelcome.

We all think having high expectations means what we want is exemplary behavior in every instance, in every situation, at all times. But we really don't want that, strangely enough. Yes, what we really want is to know how to handle misbehaviors.

So, if you agree that misbehavior is inevitable and it is, knowing how to react to it, to the mistakes and failures and even the intentional wrongdoing that will sometimes happen with scouts, is our opportunity to help them internalize the meaning of the ideals in the scout oath and law. So we have to be prepared to deal with all kinds of difficulties in misbehavior and rather than making a huge deal out of them, we want to reduce them to the smallest deal that we possibly can. No, make no mistake, I am not saying that we ought to sanction this sort of behavior, just that it would be foolish to think it doesn't exist or to react out of all proportion when we discover that it does.

I'm not suggesting we have a permissive attitude or low expectations, but just that we respond proportionately to bad behavior in a way that achieves the ultimate goal that we have as scouters. It's a continuous struggle to measure supervision against granting the latitude required to grow and understand the scout oath and law.

We can't compel compliance if we expect the oath and law to have meaning and lasting effect. Listen to that again.

We can't compel complete compliance if we expect the oath and law to have a lasting effect and have any meaning in the lives of our scouts. We only have a lasting effect and these things only have meaning if scouts internalize the ideals that we champion voluntarily as a shared belief. Voluntarily can't be compelled to be a good scout. That's something you have to volunteer to do.

If that's not going to be absolutely compelled and it's going to be voluntary, you're going to have problems and so you should be prepared for them and have a way of dealing with them. So remember we talked about cognitive dissonance.

That should be happening in your brain right now, because I'm saying the highest of expectations, yet understanding that those expectations are not always going to be met and that that's okay, not in a permissive atmosphere, not in a way that sanctions any of those actions or misbehaviors, but one that deals with them proportionately. One of the possible reactions to the incident I described earlier is to ratchet up adult involvement and supervision. But, like I said, that's based on a false theory that a lack of supervision is responsible for what happened and that to fix it we'll just ratchet up the supervision, we'll make it airtight. This kind of thing can't ever happen again and truly honestly, that kind of makes us into hypocrites. And young people understand how hypocritical that kind of thing is. When we say that they are trustworthy, loyal, helpful, friendly, courteous, kind, obedient.

When we say those things about scouts and then we institute an atmosphere of airtight supervision where they can never not be those things, they understand that that's hypocritical because we're extending trust with one hand and then, in an attempt to guarantee that trust will never be broken, we're fencing them in with rules and intense supervision on the other hand. I think scouts is probably the only experience that's available to young people where we can maintain this kind of cognitive dissonance of having high expectations but expecting that we're going to deal with things that do not reach those expectations, being reasonably comfortable with that and making it a character school for the development of good people.

Now, when i've had problems- there have been plenty of problems in the 35 years i've been involved with scouts- i'm reminded that scouting should be a very safe place for scouts who fail and make mistakes and even those, yes, who consciously do bad things. Hopefully we surround our scouts with compassionate, caring adults who have a sense of proportion and experience in addressing behavior problems in young people.

Now, like i said, the reaction to an incident like this is definitely going to be beyond the scope of your ability to control the, the fallout, and you're just going to have to deal with that because this kind of thing definitely upsets adults. It definitely sends a signal to the council that they need to check up on things and make sure things are going okay and i have to say in this incident, without going into a lot of detail, that the council folks had a pretty good sense of proportion in their reaction to this.

But how would i react to a similar incident personally? Well, i don't know that i would be able to calm down the weeblows parents and the people from the pack, because i can certainly understand the emotion to which they would react to an incident of this nature and, honestly, my explanations and the way that i'm going to deal with it and things like that. They may see some fault or some shortcomings in that and they will choose whether or not they're going to associate themselves with my troop based on things that are totally without the scope of my control, because i'm certainly not going to change the nature of the way that i work with scouts in such a drastic way because of a single incident.

Now, if it was a pattern of misbehavior and things like that, maybe i would make some considerations and it would be wise to look into it and make sure that i haven't been blind to what's going on. But the first reaction out of the box is not going to be to heavily increase the amount of adult supervision i have over my scouts. If one of my scouts was doing things like it has been described in this, if they're showing inappropriate images on their phone to younger scouts, that would definitely be a cause for concern and it would be a discussion i would have with the scouts parents. I would be asking them in the scout's best interest, not in an accusatory manner, but in the scout's best interest. If this is a pattern of misbehavior that's coming to the surface that they may not be aware of had there been similar incidents with other scouts or schoolmates, this would be a good thing to talk with your son about.

You know, a significant age difference, if that was the case here, raises concerns of potential physical misconduct because, as we've learned in our youth protection training. This sort of thing could be classic grooming behavior and i don't think that that particular concern is totally misplaced in this context.

As uncomfortable as that may be, i think it's a good thing to discuss with the parents. I'd encourage them to be aware of any change in behavior in their son that indicates they have been seriously traumatized by the whole thing, because in my experience, young people are very sensitive to public reprobation once an incident like this comes to light and they could harm themselves because of it.

The other thing that i would want the parents of this scout to understand: they have to assure me there's no doubt that this kind of thing will not be repeated, and they must have a clear understanding that i do not have very many options if it is- and it will likely be- that their son will have to leave our troop. So i would also be discussing this with a scout, hopefully with one of his parents present and, if that can happen, definitely with another adult, and with the scout i would discuss what our appropriate response would be.

Not to go into detail about that just now, but i am going to point you to an article that i wrote about this, about constructive discipline and, without going into detail, that one of the basic ideas that comes into play here is that, as a scouter, i don't punish scouts. I correct behavior and we have a response to whatever the direct consequences of the behavior are, but we don't punish, we don't sanction the scout. We don't suspend the scout for a given period of time or anything like that. Those are all punishments. I'm not going to be involved in them. That is a parent's prerogative.

If they feel punishment is an order, it's for them to carry out. If they choose to keep their scout out of being actively involved for a period of time, that's up to them. What i tell them is: you need to take whatever reaction you need to take with your child and assure me that you've dealt with this in a way that guarantees this won't be repeated. And if it is repeated, i have a reduced number of options in reaction.

So make sure to look at that article, because i think it will help inform some of the ways that you deal with this. So there are a couple of other issues to deal with when we're confronted with an incident like this.

Now, the person who reported this to me told me that they went and talked with their patrol leaders council about it and the patrol leaders council decided to institute some rules affecting cell phones and things, and i don't think that they made a subjectively bad decision there, but it's not where i would have gone personally. On the upside, if you have some rules about cell phones and scouts are reminded of them, that's probably a good thing. On the downside, a rule substitutes policing for trust, and policing usually causes more problems than it solves.

Because if you say that these are the rules around cell phones, then you have to police those rules and then you have to hand out punishments for breaches of those rules and i and you just end up like in this spiral of things that i don't personally like to get myself involved in. And usually when these kind of rules are instituted in a reaction to an incident, they get dismantled